Now That It's Here, Is There a Place For Windows RT?

concealment sends this quote from Ars: "The argument back then was this: Windows on ARM would mean discarding the thing that makes Windows entrenched and important: Windows applications. Tablets need all-new applications, and if you're going to run all-new applications then you don't really need Windows. ... In the time it has taken Microsoft to bring Windows on ARM to market, ARM's once overwhelming battery life advantage has been erased. The ARM CPUs may still have a slight power use edge, but the difference will typically be dwarfed by the power consumption of the screen. The Intel processors, in turn, bring CPU performance that is probably best in class (or close to it), and most importantly of all the ability to run the full version of Windows 8 and existing Windows applications. The hardware could look identical to the user, but if it has Intel inside, the user experience will be quite different. ... With these constraints and limitations, it's hard to see who exactly Windows RT is for. I acknowledge that there are certainly some users who will be content to use the browser, mail app, and perhaps type the occasional letter in Word or balance their checkbook in Excel: people for whom the Windows Store's current gaps do not matter. But I think a much wider selection of users will be ill-served by Windows RT."

Windows RT == Zune

[tekrat]

in other words, supported for a few years and then dropped when there's zero financial incentive to keep it going. It will be treated by developers as a dead-end, so there will never be compelling apps, which will sign the death-warrant.

It's too bad tablets are pretty much useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great that Windows 8 might be a good tablet OS, but that doesn't change the fact that tablets have proven themselves to be over-hyped fad devices with no practical use for most people.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. There'll be a few people who'll respond to this describing their niche usage of a tablet, but they're in the minority. Most tablet purchasers got caught up in the hype, bought a tablet without thinking, and now they have yet another pointless device that they don't use. It sits there collecting dust.

For most people, it doesn't even take a month before the novelty wears off. I think this is exactly why, aside from Apple, we see basically no other company successfully selling tablets. Apple is a unique case. I suspect that many of its buyers are buying iPads as status symbols, rather than as a usable device. I'm not even sure if they should be considered tablet purchases. It's more akin to buying jewelry than it is to buying a computing device.

Re:Windows 8

[Sir_Sri]

And the thing is, MS is thinking long term. They don't want to be caught pants down 3 or 4 years from now if some ARM maker produces a chip that is serious competition to Intel.

The only way that future windows applications will work on both ARM and x86 is if people start developing for that now. They need just enough marketshare to warrant the added development time* for developers to make both an ARM and x86 version so that windows 9 or windows 10 on both will actually be appealing

*Supposedly it's just a simple recompile in visual studio. How well that will actually work in practice on applications that need optimization I don't know. I know where I am isn't worried about ARM versions of what we do atm, so I haven't had any justification for working on it.

On The Phone

[zanderz]

Windows 8 Phone is supposed to have the same kernel as WinRT devices on ARM. If they can pull this off they will have it both ways: a huge desktop user base with tons of messy legacy and a sparkly new "walled garden" where they will have lots more control over the whole experience and what is allowed in. Writing for Metro mode is supposed to yield an app that will pretty much run on phones and tablets, without the fragmentation of Android devices/environments. Even if nobody else wants it on their tablets or desktops, at least one batch of Nokia phones will need it.

Re:Windows RT == Zune

[tftp]

Keep in mind though, that apps made for windows 8 "metro-style" will be compatible with windows RT. So the ecosystem will build up anyway.

Now you need to answer a different question. Why would anyone develop for Metro? What is the advantage of having one or several huge monitors dedicated to one application? Even the IE in Metro mode looks ugly as sin, to the point of being useless. Who would want a browser that uses "magic spots" to reveal menus and that would hide every control in existence at the first opportunity? Can you imagine Photoshop in Metro mode? Or SolidWorks? PC software is not for playing around, it's for doing work, and Metro is not helping there at all.

Metro applications, necessarily simplistic, make sense on a tablet. However tablets do not benefit from x86 - to the point that hardly any of them use x86 today. A Metro developer would be burdened with supporting his software on platforms that generate no sales.